| > Counterexamples to your point: Mozart, guy was copying whole compositions by memory at age 14 Mozart’s father was a minor composer, accomplished musician, and skilled teacher (he published a well regarded violin textbook the same year WA was born). Mozart started picking up musical education through his father teaching his older sister. > Einstein? The tutored son of an engineer, graduate of ETH Zurich? Both of them were geniuses, but in both cases their familial background and educational access were not exactly minor. If you’re looking for something even remotely close to an actual self-made genius, it’s probably Ramanujan you want. And here you could actually argue formal education was unsuitable and damaging: dude was only interested in pure mathematics so failed out of two colleges (as well as his FA), nearly starved until he chanced a meeting with V. Ramaswamy Aiyer (the founder of the Indian Mathematical Society). But such stark examples are not common at all. It’s almost certain we collectively missed on a much higher number of Einsteins and Mozarts because they did not have the early access and education to blossom, than we stifled and smothered ramanujans. Would Jacob Collier exist if he’d been born in a slum of Chennai, on the streets of Bogota, or in a project? That seems doubtful. But how many Jacob Colliers did, and were lost? |